You can tell a lot about a person by looking at his or her hands.
But sometimes, as is the case with Ariana Boyd, first impressions don’t always tell the whole story, and those who don’t know her well might mistakenly take her perfectly manicured nails as a sign of someone who would avoid working with her hands at all costs — let alone have her own set of rock chisels.
Growing up in New England didn’t offer many opportunities to go rock hunting, but that didn’t stop Ariana from learning all she could about all things sedimentary, igneous and metamorphic. And her family’s annual vacations to Telluride, Colorado, afforded her not only the opportunity to ski and snowboard but also to go rock hunting to her heart’s content, leading her to dreams of one day becoming Colorado’s state geologist.
Intending to study paleontology at Colby College in Maine, her coursework led her to Geology 101, where she discovered an affinity for rocks in general, shifting her focus to structural and microstructural geology. (For the non-rock hound, this means Ariana could run the board in a quiz on how the Earth took shape.)
As she approached graduation, she had no real plan on what path to take until an advisor suggested graduate school, something she hadn’t really given much consideration to up to that point. She enrolled in the master’s program at the University of Tennessee, where she became a volunteer lecturer at the McClung Museum of Natural History & Culture and designed and administered the “Rocks and Minerals” event for the Tennessee Science Olympiad.
She also found a truly otherworldly geological fascination. Shifting her course of study to Earth and planetary sciences, her master’s thesis was titled “Sand Deposit Mapping and Aeolian Morphologies as Clues for Identifying Origins of Dark Sand in Aeolis Dorsa, Mars.”
While it certainly stretched her intellectually, she realized that neither terrestrial nor extraterrestrial geology held the key to what she wanted as a career. Having narrowed her next move down to either law school or business school, she sought the advice of her psychiatrist father, who told her simply that a “law degree equals a power degree.”
It was at Vanderbilt Law School where Ariana was finally able to firmly plant her feet on a career path that was challenging, fulfilling and practical. It is also where she met a fellow law student named Sean. When he was offered a job in Texas after law school, she decided to make the move to Dallas as well, ultimately joining Estes Thorne Ewing & Payne.
Both decisions have been life changing. Earlier this summer, Sean proposed during a trip to Telluride, presenting her with her favorite rock yet. And the camaraderie and support she has received at the women-led firm confirmed to her that she had made the right choice in pursuing law over digging through the Earth’s physical history.
That doesn’t mean, though, that she has entirely turned her back on one day becoming the Colorado state geologist.
Although her non-work hours are devoted to her two cats, two dogs and ball python, she makes sure to keep up on the latest geology news and trends. She also never travels without her rock hammer, just in case she finds an opportunity to do a little exploring.
Manicures can always be repaired, after all.